Hotshot Racing

[spatular]

so this is the new racing game that looks like virtua racing.

edit- here’s a video:

 

i like it.
 

The handling is good, it’s like old school arcade drifting, a little bit like outrun 2 - although I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, it’s not as good as outrun 2. Not many things are. Also you get boost from drifting.

 

so the time trials are really good fun, there’s staff ghosts to beat and leaderboards and stuff. I’ve spent most of my time trying to beat the staff ghosts and friends.

 

the racing is where we start to see problems, the AI/rubber banding are both very agressive, it’s weird. They will ram you, and even if you save up boost and use it all at once they will still be right behind you. It’s still manageable, not had many problems winning the championships on hard mode, but guess expert mode could be annoying. I pretty much think all racing games have bad AI though so it’s just a bit more worse than usual here. I prefer time trials so it won’t affect me as much.

there are a lot of cars, 8? Drivers who have 4 cars each. With different stats and stuff. Most/all based on real cars, I’m disappointed the GT-ONE doesn’t seem to be the fastest for time trials so I can’t use it.

 

the tracks, hmmm, there are some cool tracks, they look nice, but overall I’m less convinced by the tracks, instead of having a few basic tracks, some intermediate tracks and some tricky ones, they all seem to be on a similar level, Some a bit harder but mostly quite easy to get round, quite wide. They aren’t bad mind, there’s one with dinosaurs and everything, I sort of like them but they could have been better I guess. There are a decent amount of tracks, 16 I think. And you can play them reversed, or was it mirrored? Can’t remember.

 

its on gamepass, that’s the version I’m playing. Not 100% sure but don’t think it’s on pc gamepass.
 

I think it’s out on everything, steam, PS4, Xbox, switch.

 

so overall it’s thumbs up for me, think I’d have been happy to pay the preorder price which was about 12 quid, bearing in mind I really like time trials so am less bothered about the AI annoyances.

[Maryokutai]

Yeah, the AI is horrible. Maybe one out of ten times you can cleanly get out of a drift without anyone ramming you. It's a shame because the playability is excellent and despite all the SEGA influences, mostly reminds me of Ridge Racer to be honest.

 

I might use your trick and just not play the Championships because as you say, they're not particularly hard, it's just very annoying to play them as you're feeling like the ball in Pong most of the time. I hope they patch that out, get rid of either the aggressiveness or the rubber banding. Both at the same time is just overkill.

 

I agree with the tracks, they're a bit tame in comparison to other fun racers. There's a few favorites though, the Casino stages have a nice layout for example. Also, some courses seem to run on partially reversed segments of other tracks, but they're not 1:1 the same thing backwards. You can mirror them independently from this.

 

Overall though a really nice game. Also very pretty to look at with its clean, low-poly style. And very smooth, too, at least on standard Xbox. Switch version seems a bit meh from what I've seen.

[Maf]

I played a bit of this today. Just enough to get through the first 2 championships on Normal. It didn’t really grab me at all. 
 

I liked the boost start mechanic, that’s novel. The controls are pretty decent. I like drifting in arcade racers where I can slap the stick back’n’forth to maintain the drift. Kind of skill-less how easy it is to do here but still fun. I like that the announcer reminded me of the announcer from Wave Race 64. It’s cool that each racer has 4 cars specific to them. I don’t think I’ve seen that before. 
 

On Normal the AI was easy enough to deal with. I very quickly formed the strategy of never boost. Just drift and slipstream behind them until the final leg of the last lap then spam the go faster button and win. If it’s not viable on harder difficulties fair enough but on Normal it’s cake. 
 

The game is pretty unremarkable overall, though. I didn’t hate it, but I don’t think I’ll be going back to it. It’s just not fast enough, there’s not enough going on, I don’t really like the way it looks. Arcade racers to me should be fast, exciting and be played like I’m on the edge of control all the time. This is very medium energy. 
 

Didn’t hate it but don’t like it

[spatular]

Yeah it’s like Mario kart, on normal you’re playing 50cc mode, it’s really slow and boring, try the faster modes or timetrial maybe.

[spatular]

finished this now, got golds on expert and beat all the staff ghosts, overall it's a thumbs up, the handling is good, had most fun in the timetrials. might play some more timetrials if there's any timetrial challanges going on.

 

[Maryokutai]

Good going on the Expert CPs, I tried the first one but in the second race someone knocked me through the track which left me so far behind that I couldn't make it back on top and I decided to not play those again until they do something about the AI. At least I got normal and hard.

 

Time rials unfortunately don't grab me as much as I though they would. I also tried the Police and Robbers thing in Arcade but it's really badly explained and the framerate constantly tanks.

 

I also tried to play multiplayer a bit. The first game was on Expert and a mirrored track which I wasn't prepared for. The second one I won pretty easily but then the game crashed when I passed the finish line.

 

I like the driving in this. Everything else just wants to annoy me though, it seems.☹️

[mfnick]

Gave this a quick go, did the first championship and started the 2nd but then it hard crashed on me unfortunately. 
 

I like it but like you all say, it doesn’t actually seem to be very good. I love the art style and the handling model is really fun. The track design and backgrounds are fun and interesting so far too. Everything is there for a great game but something just seemed off. & the AI/rubber banding is a proper cunt. 
 

I’ll give it another go but not expecting much to change